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Where We Live: Lancaster

Lancaster

Schools officials last week began their 2013-14 school budget deliberations with a discussion of the district’s expected state aid and its likely spending on operations and maintenance, transportation, debt service and employee benefits.

Jamie Phillips, the assistant superintendent of business and support services, took issue in her presentation with the proposed 2013-14 state funding reported by the governor’s office of $29.25 million, an amount that includes building aid and is listed as a 4.03 percent, or $1.13 million, increase over 2012-13. “But that’s actually not the fact,” she told members of the School Board and public at last Monday’s board meeting.

Phillips said that, based on her past experience and the aid formulas employed by the state, the district can expect to receive $27.69 million in state aid.

This would represent just a 0.12 percent, or $21,750, increase over the current budget, and would represent a drop of 1.97 percent, or $556,274, from the $28.25 million Phillips had counted on when she drew up the district’s budget for next year.

Looking at other parts of the budget, the district expects spending on operations and maintenance to rise by 2 percent; transportation to rise by 1.82 percent; debt service to fall by 11.45 percent and employee benefits to rise by 11.61 percent.

The School Board will hold a number of budget work sessions in the weeks and months to come before preparing a budget proposal to put before district voters on May 21.

Also this week:

• The Town Board on Monday is set to vote on the sale of the former Colecraft Manufacturing building for $1.4 million to Erie Engineered Products, which plans to move its operations from North Tonawanda to the industrial building at 3949 Walden Ave. later this year.

The town has owned the 74,000-square-foot building since 2003, when the Town Board purchased the facility for $1.6 million with the intention of converting it to a police and courts building. Those plans fell through, the Colecraft facility today is used for storage and as offices for the Detective Bureau and the town is building a new law-enforcement complex on Pavement Road.

The Town Board in December reached a tentative purchase agreement with Erie Engineered Products, a manufacturer of shipping and storage containers used in the defense industry.

The Town Board and the town Planning Board are meeting at 6:30 p.m. Monday in Town Hall, 21 Central Ave., to review the environmental impact of the sale and Erie Engineered Product’s reuse of the building.

If this review finds no significant issues, the Town Board will vote to approve the sale at its meeting at 8. This full Town Board meeting is preceded by a work session at 7.

• The Village Board’s sewer committee will hold a special session at 6 p.m. Monday in the Municipal Building, 5423 Broadway, to discuss the mapping of the village’s sanitary sewer system.

• The town Planning Board meets at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday in Town Hall.

• The village Zoning Board of Appeals is scheduled to meet at 7:15 p.m. Thursday in the Municipal Building.

• The Village Board will hold a work session at 8 a.m. Saturday in the Municipal Building to discuss items on the agenda for the Feb. 11 board meeting.